Nana Patekar almost played Mammootty’s ‘Iyer The Great’ role in Hindi; ‘Udayon’ came close too

Can you imagine Nana Patekar stepping into the role of Soorya Narayanan, the character played by Mammootty in director Bhadran’s ‘Iyer The Great’? That was the veteran filmmaker’s plan for a Hindi remake of the film, which he wanted to mount on a much larger scale.

Months after the success of ‘Iyer The Great’, Bhadran and producer Goodknight Mohan (R Mohan) began dreaming of taking the film to Hindi cinema. The Malayalam film, which presented Mammootty in one of his most unusual avatars, had done particularly well in Tamil Nadu too. Bhadran felt the story had the potential to travel further, and imagined remaking it on a much larger canvas and with a bigger budget.

And for reprising the role played by Mammootty, he had only one actor in mind: Nana Patekar. Bhadran remembers meeting Nana in Mumbai with Goodknight Mohan, who helped arrange the introduction. Nana was already a major star at the time, known not just for his formidable screen presence but also for his intense personality. He, Bhadran recalls, was also known to carry a rifle with him.

“Nana was a good friend of Goodknight Mohan who arranged the meeting. I still remember candidly chatting with him and then broaching the storyline behind Iyer The Great. There was no one else who I could envision to reprise Mammootty’s role in the Hindi version. Nana had the looks and the figure to make him the Soorya Narayanan in Hindi,” says Bhadran. But it was not the actor's imposing persona that stayed with Bhadran. It was the way Nana responded to the story.

Bhadran had begun narrating the story with the image at the heart of the film — a powerful man living near a temple, climbing a tree to retrieve his favourite parrot. But the rescue does not go as planned. The parrot drags him along, leaving him stranded high up in the tree. When he looks down, he is overcome by vertigo. That frightening experience becomes the turning point of his life. After he comes down, something extraordinary has happened: he can foresee the future.

Bhadran had barely finished narrating the sequence when Nana reacted. “I just told him, ‘The next day, it is a new dawn.’ He suddenly jumped up from the chair and hugged me, even biting my cheek. If you know him, you would know how expressive he is. He was completely blown away by that peak point of the film,” Bhadran recalls, still able to remember Nana Patekar’s excitement. For the filmmaker, that reaction was more than just encouragement. It felt like confirmation that he had found the right actor for Soorya Narayanan.

But the Hindi version of ‘Iyer The Great’ never took off. There were plans and discussions, but somewhere along the way, the project remained only an exciting possibility. Bhadran eventually moved on to ‘Spadikam,’ the Mohanlal-starrer that would reinstate Mohanlal’s stardom.

Nana had watched ‘Spadikam’ too. And Bhadran says he would have been more than happy if the actor had wanted to take the film to Hindi. “If he had initiated any discussions about remaking it in Hindi, I would have gladly obliged,” he says. Interestingly, ‘Iyer The Great’ was not the only time Bhadran had imagined Nana Patekar in one of his films.

In 2005, while making ‘Udayon’, Bhadran had considered Nana for the role of Unni Vaidyan, Kunju’s close friend and Maya’s uncle, a part eventually played by Nassar. This time, however, it was language that stood in the way. Nana liked the story, Bhadran recalls, but was unsure about taking on a Malayalam role unless he could also dub for himself. Malayalam was a difficult language for him to master, and eventually he decided against doing the film.

There is an interesting footnote to all this. When Nana visited Kerala for the International Film Festival of Kerala in 2023, he said that he had never been approached for a Malayalam film by filmmakers from the industry. Bhadran smiles at the apparent contradiction. “The projects I spoke to him about never materialised. That is probably what made him say that,” he says.

Nana was right in one sense. He never did end up acting in a Malayalam film. But Bhadran had approached him for two projects, and both came close to happening before falling through.